1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to video motion stabilization, and more specifically to an image and video motion stabilization system for providing reliable camera jitter control.
2. Description of the Related Art
The need for reliable camera jitter control is increasing as users are demanding that the picture in the viewfinder and the captured image or video both appear stable. Camera jitter control algorithms attempt to distinguish movement of the camera itself from movement within the scene being captured to provide a stable viewing display and to significantly reduce or eliminate the camera motion during capture. The conventional approach to camera jitter either requires storing the complete frame for more accurate motion vectors, so that the amount of memory needed for higher resolution camera equipment becomes prohibitive, or uses reduced memory space with less computational overhead, so that the quality of image stabilization is degraded. Existing camera jitter stabilization algorithms also often depend on an external motion vector, typically from the encoder block. Such dependency on computations subsequently performed in the processing chain does not allow stabilization of the current frame and does not enable still image capture stabilization.
It is desirable to provide a reliable jitter control with significantly reduced memory requirements and computational complexity for motion estimation while also achieving good stabilization quality. It is also desired to provide a more contained algorithm as part of the image signal processing block which does not depend on subsequent computations to enable stabilization of the current frame and still image capture stabilization.